The victory in Rio Grande do
Sul • Eduardo Mancuso middle east
Palestine/Israel: What about
Wye? • Roland Rance europe
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Ireland: Dublin's stormclouds
• Paul Flannigan
6
Britain: Safety at work?
7
EuroMarch summer school
The victory in Rio americas
8
USA: special dossier on the
Grande do Sul Winning the state government in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul was the PT's biggest success in the 1998 elections. By mounting a combative, mass, left-wing campaign, the popular, democratic alternative was able to defeat the neoliberal project of the local elites. Eduardo Mancuso The results of the first round were already a political defeat for the representatives of neoliberalism, and a big victory for the PT. The total number of votes for the PT candidate for Governor, Olivio Dutra (2.295 million) and the candidate of the PDT, Senator Emilia Fernandes (309 thousand), was higher than that for the incumbent Governor, Antonio Britto (2.319 million).
In Rio Grande, the PT presidential candidate Lula da Silva collected more than 400,000 more votes than incumbent Fernando Henrique
In the elections for the State Assembly, the Britto slate, called "Rio Grande Vencedor (victorious)", but dubbed by PT supporters "Rio Grande Vendedor (sell-out)", managed to elect 35 state deputies, whilst the People's Front got 13(12 from the PT and 1 from the relatively small Brazilian Socialist Party, PSB). The PDT won 7 seats. Of the 31 seats allocated to the state in the Federal Assembly in Brasilia, the People's
Front won 9(8 for the PT and 1 for the PSB), whilst the PDT won 4. Fifty times more money
Going to a second round was not part of Britto's plans. The outgoing governor's entire campaign was geared up to a victory in the first round. With an alliance of eleven parties behind him - the biggest Rio Grande do Sul has ever seen - Britto had four times more time on radio and TV than Olivio. It's believed that his campaign budget in the first round was fifty times greater than that of the People's Front.
It was a professional campaign in every sense, shaped by countless surveys, vast numbers of people paid to wave Britto flags, and an outrageous media manipulation of opinion polls, thumping home the message that the outgoing governor would certainly win in the first
Britto's election propaganda was handed over to the marketing firm Duda Mendonça. They had a free hand in the first round.
For the People's Front, on the other hand, campaign communications were co-ordinated by party leaders and executed (brilliantly) by a team from the Casa de Cinema (an independent film & TV production centre), on the basis of decisions taken together by the creative professionals and the campaign's political co-ordinators. It was clear to everyone that this was not about selling a product, but about presenting to the population ideas for change and an alternative programme for
Mumia Abu-Jamal campaign
• compiled by Steve Bloom
The USA's "lawless war
12 crimes" • Noam Chomsky
The 51" state
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• Ramsey Clark asia
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Liberating theology
• Jean Dupont
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Japan's economic misery
• Dave Packer
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Indonesia: the struggle for justice in Aceh
• Teresa Birks
Dossier: "gay marriage?"
20 Introduction
21 France: Who's afraid of the
Solidarity Pact?
• Christophe Marcq
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Belgium: What about the straights? • Carmen Saffo
25
Netherlands: After partnership, marriage?
• Peter Drucker
26 Portugal: A new movement
• Sergio Vitorino
USA:Bill Clinton's "defense"
28 of marriage history
29 The Fourth International: 60 years of struggle
• Livio Maitan obituaries
32 Vinod Mishra,
May Wickramasuriya reviews
34 "How it all began"
by Nikolai Bukarin
(reviewed by Joe Auciello)
International Viewpoint #308 February 1999 3
Populism in Latin America
Adolfo Gilly, Helena Hirata, Carlos M. Vilas and the PRT (Argentina) [40 pages]
• E2/5350/20FF. Cheque payable to P. Rousset, IRE, Postbus 53290, 1007 Amsterdam, Netherlands.
* Brazil Rio Grande do Sul.
The People's Front campaign succeeded in holding the Britto administration responsible for the increase in unemployment in the state, for the chaos in the health service, for the agricultural crisis, and for the sell-off of public assets.
Olivio Dutra systematically denounced the failure of Governor Antonio Britto to keep his word, after he had so publicly committed himself in the 1994 elections not to privatize the CRT and CEEE (the local telephone and power utilities). Class terrorism
The Britto campaign resorted extensively to slander and insult against the PT and Olivio Dutra in particular, with a torrent of foul and unattributed leaflets circulating throughout the state, which the electoral authorities failed to appre-
In addition to this there was a campaign of what might be called "social terrorism" , carried out in thoroughly by the state's main employers in all sectors of the economy.
They threatened their workers with closures, mass redundancies and the suspension of state contracts if Olivio beat Britto. This propaganda reached veritable paroxysms in the second round. Nothing of its kind had ever been seen in our state, neither in breadth nor in intensity. This was real "class hysteria".
As a result, contrary to what the local media would have us believe, these elections in Rio Grande do Sul did not "honour the best traditions of the south", but rather the worst. The economic elites prepared a climate of terror amongst their employees and officials at the prospect of a victory for Olivio.
Yet none of this prevented the People's Front from winning. Olivio's charisma, the energy of the activists, the PT's positive image in the state capital, Porto Alegre (after years running the town hall), combined with the natural opposition tendencies of the population of the state. We defeated not only Britto and Cardoso, but the historic block of the ruling classes in Rio Grande do Sul. Victory in the debate
In the second round, once he'd got over the shock of his defeat in the first, Britto decided to concentrate his strategy on the public debates, encouraging the media to stage a whole series of these, unlike the first round where he had systematically avoided open counting on his experience as journalist and the "clash of ideas" to give him victory.
The debates came and Olivio's performance was firm: denunciation of the situation of the outgoing administration and its total subservience to the federal government, the privileges accorded to the big at the expense of the small, the state government's irresponsible attitude towards agriculture, unemployment and health, the proliferation of tolls on local roads introduced by the neoliberal government (leading to campaign stickers saying "Olivio is the way, Britto is the toll-road"'), the shameless sell-off of public assets and the many promises which the candidate of the elites had so flagrantly broken.
The two presidential candidates of the left, Lula and Brizola, appeared throughout Olivio Dutra's campaign, and the PDT's participation in the second round campaign was decisive for the People's Front victory. Olivio got 50.78% of second round votes, The challenge of government
Since assuming office on 1 January, Olivio Dutra and Miguel Rosetto face the challenge of governing the fifth largest state in Brazil. Rio Grande has grave financial problems and a federal debt the negotiated terms of which make any kind of investment impossible. The PT does not have a majority in the State Assembly, and must deal with an open adversary in the presidential palace in Brasilia. But then, who said it would be easy?
To get to the Governor's Palace, Dutra, former mayor of the state capital Puerto Allegre, had to overcome many obstacles.
First there was a bitter internal dispute in March over the primaries, in which Tarso Genro, a well-known figure on the right of the PT failed to get nominated, and subsequently refused, along with many of his supporters, to lend any support to Olivio Dutra's campaign.
Then there was the initial failure of the alliance with the PDT, and the need to confront the most powerful political alliance the bourgeoisie had ever built in the state. Not to mention the lack of financial resources, which was only overcome through the sale by and amongst the members of fake moustaches (to resemble Olivio's own bushy moustache) and our traditional red flags. Democracy and participation
The People's Front campaign never tired of denouncing the Britto administration as a government of the few and for the rich. We managed to combine a stance of radical opposition with clear, alternative proposals for change, and a commitment to the exploited and oppressed majority with the energy and passion of our members.
What we proposed was a new model of development, combined with popular participation and democracy. According to Olivio, "the idea that we needed a form of development that was ecologically sustainable, economically feasible and socially fair, was what won in both the first and second rounds of the elections for the state government"
For Olivio "power means the possibility of a radical exercise of democracy, broadening the community's access to decision-making and making the voters subjects in the process, even the act of governing, along the lines of what has been happening for ten years in Porto Alegre with the highly successful experience of the Participative
At 23.30 hrs on election night, Governor Antonio Britto conceded defeat. At that moment, across the Largo da Epatur, the city square where days earlier 100,000 people had gathered for the final campaign rally, tens of thousands of PT supporters, flags in hand beneath the driving rain, "washed their souls" in a celebration of this historic victory, the conquest of a democratic and popular goverment in Rio Grande.
Now it is time to roll up our sleeves and build a broad mass movement capable of confronting the policies of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the ruling classes.
We must find ways to expose and put into reverse the financial strangulation imposed by the central state. To reverse the previous administration's outrageous renegotiation of the terms of the state debt [see last month's International Viewpoint]. To say nothing of the national straightjacket created by the latest fiscal package agreed with the IMF).
We need a mass movement that
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
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International Viewpoint #308 February 1999 can develop policies and defend the popular and democratic government of Rio Grande do Sul. * The author is Secretary for Communications, Porto Alegre Workers Party (PT). This article first appeared in the Brazilian magazine Em Tempo.